


12:01

by eyemoji



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/F, greensboro, this was a commission for marinavermillion, with the direction 'rachel lives and gets back to earth'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 09:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14541657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyemoji/pseuds/eyemoji
Summary: rachel young makes a choice and lives a life she shouldn't have known.commission for @marinavermilion





	12:01

**_yesteryear_ **

 

 _“wait,”_ she says, and her voice is drenched in liquid sorrow, steeped in the poison that is altogether-too-last-minute regrets. the woman she is calling out to in all her impassioned glory does not turn, does not breathe, does not seem to listen.

 

“thank you isabel,” the woman says, the vermilion of her lips hidden by loose pieces of hair falling forward as she flips open a panel void of its usual thrumming life. “but this is a call i _want_ to make.”

 

rachel can just barely feel it, how lovelace stares two dead stones into the curve of her back as she weighs something in the air that only she can sense. there’s a long, calm, collected pause as isabel lovelace presumably straightens her posture, narrows her eyes, and strikes right between her shoulderblades-- _“why?”_

 

there’s no room for error as she calculates a response, the words already flickering through her head like the screen on a ti-84 whose battery’s about to give in-- _forward, progress, to start anew._

 

_because we’ll get it right this time._

 

at least, in the sense that mr cutter will make things right as rain and that everything will be sharper and stronger, and _she_ will be sharper and stronger, the way she’s worked her whole life to be, the goal she forgot when she last lay against isabel lovelace in a bed twice the size of this room-- this is not the right answer.

 

this is not the right answer, and she seems as calm and collected as she always has, down on earth, in the office, tangled up between white 500 thread count-- which is to say, her heart is racing away at thirty-three times the speed of light and there’s no foreseeable way of increasing the drag coefficient enough to stop the gears grinding away at the new plan slowly unfolding in flashes of afferent neurons.

 

_“rachel.”_

 

lovelace’s voice grates on her like the most divine symphony against a gentle summer wind, against the cold and unforgiving void of space, and for a moment rachel empathizes with their alien friends; how maddening it must be to be haunted by something just out of grasp to the edge of insanity such that there's no longer any choice but to go chasing after it.

 

and even as her finger hovers above the silver button she knows that she will chase after her, because rachel young does not believe in true love. she believes in progress, and the palpable, and, although she is still a tad skeptical, she has learned-- from mr cutter, no less-- to believe in _people._

 

she lets her finger fall.

 

** _the time before_ **

 

it’s a sunny, sunny day when rachel’s slated to screen the newest candidate for the hephaestus deep space mission, and the list of things she’d rather be doing stretches to the leo constellation and back.

 

at least, that is, until she _meets_ the candidate. her name is isabel lovelace, and she’s witty, she’s fearless, she’s certainly got a mind of her own-- rachel’s own screening notes could be transformed into a novel.

 

maybe she can make time on that to-do list for one more thing…

 

 _“rachel,”_ lovelace says later, against her fingers and the curve of her spine in the darkness, at an hour so late that rachel allows her head to fall upon her shoulder, hair spilling out over her skin.

 

 _“shh,”_ says rachel, firmly but not unkindly, _“sleep now. you can thank me later.”_ she catches a slight smirk as it flickers across lovelace’s face, briefly, before it disappears and she twists farther into the blankets and closer to rachel’s warmth.

 

** _now_ **

 

it’s with painful nostalgia that rachel drags herself up the hill in five inch heels, burning sheer determination as she clears the top, buzzes herself into the greying, peeling building, and knocks on the door of apartment 5B.

 

she’s only just beginning to regret her decision when the door opens, and there, standing on the other side of it, gripping the hand lazily as if this is no shock, seeing rachel here, no makeup, hair let down, a mess by her own standards, at her door in the weaning light of the evening.

 

“hey.”

 

it’s strange, how, as lovelace lets her inside and she drifts in like the ghost of christmas past, the memories don’t come flooding back. instead, her mind turns to that fateful moment aboard the uss hephaestus, where just one word had changed the course of everything she’d come to know.

 

_“wait.”_

 

_even as her finger hovers above the silver button, she knows that she will chase after her._

_she lets her finger fall-- fall down, down, past the edge of the console, down to its underside, where she leans forward and rips a wire out. it’s raw and real and she’s breathing a little harder, but as she slices the remaining bundle with the knife hidden in her hair, a new feeling begins to bubble up inside her chest._

 

_“don’t make me regret this.”_

 

“you know,” says lovelace, voice smooth and low and just out of reach as they sit a foot apart, so close and yet so far, at lovelace’s rickety dining table, “that was a good thing you did.”

 

rachel looks her straight in the eyes when she responds.

 

“i didn’t do it to be good.”

 

the edges of lovelace’s lips curl against themselves, as if she’s trying to fight back a smile. rachel watches her intently, watches them intently as they struggle with themselves. she can relate.

 

she’s so lost in this train of thought that it’s almost a shock when lovelace is closer, suddenly much closer, but rachel doesn’t shy away; and then lovelace’s lips are on her own, and they’re warm and soft, yet firm, just as rachel could remember, if she wanted to bother dredging up the old memories in the middle of _this,_ while lovelace pushes and pulls and gives and takes and makes a proper mess of what hair had at least been deemed ‘passable’ in public before.

 

lovelace pulls back, and there’s a comment about rachel’s lipstick-- or the lack thereof-- and then lovelace is pulling her up, saying she might have an old tube or two in her room, in addition to some other things that might belong to rachel, if she knows what she means, and rachel lets her lead her further into the apartment, back along a timeline they almost didn’t get to take.

 

she stays the night, but her eyes are wide open as the clock turns 12:01, restless in the paradoxical _newness_ of everything, and when she senses lovelace is still very much awake, she turns to her, lips parted to ask a question that come morning she knows she will regret.

 

“shh,” says lovelace, firmly but not unkindly, “sleep now. you can thank me later,” and rachel catches that same smirk, from all those years ago, as it dances across her lips, before she shakes her head and slides into bed beside her.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i hope you enjoyed this; i certainly loved writing it!  
> my commissions are still open and info can be found on my blog, @justasmalltownai, or at the link below. thank you!
> 
> http://justasmalltownai.tumblr.com/post/173172962960/hello-as-another-semester-approaches-its-end-and


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